An open collection of baseball's little-known records and curiosities.

"He would have been among the league leaders in batting average for a majority of the season had he had enough plate appearances." -- 2008 St. Louis Cardinals Media Guide about non-roster invitee Mark Johnson

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Games Finished & Saves

As most baseball fans know, Trevor Hoffman is the all-time saves leader with 578 over the length of his career. His 578th save came last night against the Los Angeles Dodgers after a rocky ninth inning. While each save obviously sees him extend his own saves record, last night he tied another career mark. It was his 802nd career game finished, tying him with former saves leader Lee Smith.

Games finished (GF) is, really, a useless counting stat. All it tells you is that such-and-such pitcher was the last reliever to appear in a game for his team. That's not that impressive, right? After all, a guy who mops up blowouts can rack up games finished just as easily as a closer. Then again, chances are that guy mopping up blowouts probably won't stay in the league very long. So, one game finished isn't very impressive, but you have to be pretty darn good to get up to 500-600-700 GF.

With that in mind, here are the sixteen pitchers with over 600 games finished through August 3:

Lee Smith, 802

Trevor Hoffman, 802

John Franco, 774

Mariano Rivera, 753

Rollie Fingers, 709

Jeff Reardon, 695

Rich Gossage, 681

Roberto Hernandez, 667

Hoyt Wilhelm, 651

Doug Jones, 640

Kent Tekulve, 638

Billy Wagner, 637

Sparky Lyle, 634

Jose Mesa, 633

Todd Jones, 619

Gene Garber, 609

Three pitchers on that list are still active. Behind them, Troy Percival sits in 27th place with 546 and Jason Isringhausen is 37th with 467. The next healthy player is Francisco Cordero, 55th with 407. The top 1000 can be found here.

Many closers in need of work are used in the ninth inning even when it's not a save situation, so they end up with more games finished than saves. For players who became closers early in their career and never relinquished the role, a large percentage of their relief appearances result in games finished. Here are the top all-time pitchers in terms of game finished per relief appearance (min. 200 GF):